Republicans reject Obama budget plan as he takes it on road

Carney said the plan “is very detailed” in how the White House would make cuts and “It is of a piece with his budget that he put forward in February 2012.”

The place where details are missing is “anything specific, politically feasible, or substantial from the Republican side on revenues,” Carney said.

The administration and Democrats say tax rate increases are necessary because deduction caps won’t generate enough money, especially if they are designed to protect charitable contributions and to avoid affecting 98 percent of taxpayers.

A $25,000 cap on deductions with those features would raise about $450 billion over 10 years, less than one-third of what the administration wants, according to a blog post on the White House website by administration economists Gene Sperling and Jason Furman. Keeping tax rates constant would make it more difficult to overhaul the tax code in the future, they said.

That would require any future tax overhaul “to raise taxes on middle-class families simply to preserve lower rates for the most fortunate,” they wrote.